1778  Jefferson included a clause in his initial draft of the Declaration of Independence denouncing George III for forcing the slave trade onto the American colonies; this was not included in the final version. In 1778, with Jefferson's leadership, slave importation was banned in Virginia, one of the first jurisdictions worldwide to do so. Jefferson was a lifelong advocate of ending the Atlantic Slave Trade and as president led the effort to make it illegal, signing a law that passed Congress in 1807, shortly before Britain passed a similar law. 1800  Gabriel (1776 – October 10, 1800), today commonly known as Gabriel Prosser, was a literate enslaved blacksmith who planned a large slave rebellion in the Richmond, Virginia area in the summer of 1800. Information regarding the revolt was leaked prior to its execution, and he and twenty-five followers were hanged. Gabriel Prosser's uprising was notable not because of its results—the rebellion was quelled before it could begin—but because of its potential for mass chaos and widespread violence. There were other slave rebellions, but this one "most directly confronted" the Founding Fathers "with the chasm between the ideal of liberty and their messy accommodations to slavery." Virginia and other state legislatures passed restrictions on free blacks, as well as prohibiting the education, assembly, and hiring out of slaves, to restrict their ability and chances to plan similar rebellions. 1808  In the early years of the United States, immigration (not counting the enslaved, who were treated as merchandise rather than people) was fewer than 8,000 people a year, including French refugees from the slave revolt in Haiti. Legal importation of enslaved African was prohibited after 1808, though many were smuggled in to sell.   1816 Negro Fort was a short-lived fortification built by the British in 1814, during the War of 1812, in a remote part of what was at the time Spanish Florida. It was intended to support a never- realized British attack on the U.S. via its southwest border.  The fort was destroyed in 1816, while under the command of General Edmund P.Gaines, when a "hot cannon ball" landed in the magazine, destroying the fort. This action is also sometimes referred to as the Battle of Negro Fort (also called the Battle of Prospect Bluff or the Battle of African Fort). The former slaves were not familiar with use of cannons and other heavy munitions, and they were thus unable to defend themselves. 1830  First convened in 1830 the Colored Conventions Movement, or Black Conventions Movement, was a series of national, regional, and state conventions held irregularly during the decades preceding and following the American Civil War. The delegates who attended these conventions consisted of both free and formerly enslaved African Americans including religious leaders, businessmen, politicians, writers, publishers, editors, and abolitionists. The conventions provided "an organizational structure through which black men could maintain a distinct black leadership and pursue black abolitionist goals." 1850   The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern interests in slavery  and Northern Free-Soilers. The Act was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a slave power conspiracy. It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to the slaver and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate. 1863  The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the Civil War. The Proclamation changed the legal status of more than 3.5  million enslaved African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free. As soon as a slave escaped the control of his or her owner, either by running away across Union lines or through the advance of federal troops, the person was permanently free.